It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
– Charles Darwin

Only a few generations have lived through the kind of profound and monumental change that is upon us today.

Throughout human history, societies have undergone destruction and transformation as new tools were created and introduced, new classes fought for control as society reorganized around those new tools, and battles raged over whose vision of the new society would win out.

It was not necessarily the smartest or the "fittest" who emerged victorious. Those who understood that change was afoot, grabbed it with both hands, and shaped it in their interests. In the past, conditions ensured that victory almost always went to a handful of exploiters. Today, conditions permit that victory belongs to those who are fighting for the demands of the growing mass of dispossessed. This is the path to raise up all of society in the interests of all.

In such times of transition, human understanding and clarity have always been the decisive factor. Understanding the roots of our problems, assessing the battleground and alignment of forces, and having a vision of where we are trying to go is central to achieving the goals we seek. This is what Rally, Comrades! is committed to.

Past issues of Rally, Comrades! have examined society’s general economic and political motion and the resulting restructuring of the State. Our article on the California budget crisis, California Restructures to Enrich Corporations, Abandoning Workers brings this process into stark relief. Destroying the old safety net, privatizing public services, and using control over taxes and spending to shift ever-greater wealth to the corporations, California exposes the real political relations in this country. The budget crisis is not the result of insufficient resources, but reflects political control of those resources by the capitalist class to the exclusion of the interests of the rest of us.

In California, as well as around the country and the world, people are beginning to question, to protest, and attempt to organize in defiance of the capitalists' agenda. Thousands in California, from teachers to nurses to high school students, have protested California's fate. In late October, thousands marched in Chicago to demand that the banks be held responsible for what they have done to our families and homes.

Tens of thousands will gather in Detroit next year for the U.S. Social Forum. The article, The U.S. Social Forum on the Road to Detroit, examines the economic and social struggles developing today in the United States as part of the emerging objectively revolutionary process. Many of those struggles will be represented in the Social Forum process, and thousands of those participating will be searching for answers to questions about the road ahead.

But what path should the myriad of coalescing forces take? How to decide? How to proceed? The article, Demands of the Dispossessed the Only Basis of Unity, examines this question. The call to "fight the right" is widely disseminated, but this view does not recognize that conditions have changed and that we no longer face a struggle within classes, but one between classes. Fight the right implies supporting one section of the capitalist class against another. Today, we are dealing with the beginning stages of revolution.

Our approach must change accordingly. The center of political gravity has shifted. Revolutionaries must hold to that social force that has no choice but to demand and fight for its survival or starve. Fighting for these concrete demands means educating and fighting against a system instead of an employer. In the process, revolutionaries work to disseminate an understanding of the problems we face, a vision of what's possible, and an assessment and strategy of how to get there.

In such times as ours, when all of society is pulled into the vortex of destruction and change, the struggle to understand the world is a prelude to changing it. The article, Darwin at 200: The Man, the Theory, the Times, shows that the scientist Charles Darwin, like us, lived in a time of great transition, the period from a world based on agriculture to one based on industry. His theory not only introduced a new way of looking at evolution, but also, unlocked the human mind with a new conception of how change occurs. In this, he contributed not only to human knowledge in the natural sciences, but also, was part of a great intellectual leap that helped society progress to a new stage of development.

Today, we stand on the cusp of a new epoch in human history. As terrible as it is, and will become, the destruction we see all around us is the prelude to transformation. The whole of human history shows those who grasp this one truth will be those who emerge victorious.

November.2009.Vol19.Ed6
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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